Ginny Aiken: Priced to Move

“So then, why you?”

I roll my eyes. “According to Tiffany, because I’m too stupid to plan and get away with a heist like this.”

He laughs.

I smack the tray against the side of the sink. “Hey! Some sympathy would be welcome, buddy. I’ve been traumatized here.”

His laughs slow down to chuckles. “What about Mrs. Pak? Did she have anything interesting to say?”

“That Roger had lusted after those rubies ever since Mr. Pak mentioned the theft. He wanted the stones because they’re incredible. Tiffany heard about them, and she wanted the millions they’d bring. Roger didn’t care about the legalities, but he didn’t hurt Mr. Pak either. Tiffany, on the other hand, threatened Mr. Pak. She even threatened his family, but he refused to hand over the stones. He felt they should go back to the government, then be sold on the open market to the highest bidder.”

Max doesn’t say anything for a while, but instead stares at me. I get itchy and squirmy under his scrutiny. “What? Do I have spinach on my teeth?”

“No. I’m just thinking what a compliment Mr. Pak paid you. He trusted you, your integrity. He knew you’d do the right thing.”

“But I didn’t. I never even found the stones.” I turn to yank a wide ribbon of paper towels from the wall-hung roll, and the tray teeters on the edge of the sink. “Ooops!”

Max dives after the drippy tray. “Look out!”

The tray hits the floor. A thin sliver of plastic slides out the left side. On the sliver of plastic is a wide swathe of duct tape.

I stare.

Max sucks in a breath.

My knees begin to shake, and I wind up on my butt right by the tray.

Mr. Magnificent joins me, oblivious to the puddle of water in which he sits.

“Do you think—”

“Could that be—”

Our gazes meet. We both reach out, but then he draws back. “Go ahead,” he says. “You’ve earned it.”

With shaking fingers, I ease a corner of sticky silver adhesive from the white plastic and tamp down my excitement when I feel the lumps below the tape.

Millimeter by millimeter, I work the glue away, and then . . .

“Wow . . .” Admiration fills Max’s voice.

The beauty of the stones steals mine.

We’ve found the rubies.

And the gems are as stunning as anything God has placed on the face of his earth.

We stare, silent. Then, I don’t know how much later, Max reaches out and laces his fingers through mine. I curl mine around his.

Our gazes meet again.

And hold.

After the police, FBI, Interpol, Myanma dignitaries, and Mrs. Pak have again left the house, Max and I collapse on the couch.

“Bird poop, huh?” my most eloquent cohost asks.

“You gotta admit, not many are going to go looking there for a fabulous fortune.”

“Aunt Weeby thought of it. She had Rio X-rayed.”

“You’re right. She did.” I wink. “See? Brainy women run in my family.”

He laughs.

So do I. Then I sigh. “Still can’t figure out why, of all the people Mr. Pak knew in the U.S.—the whole world, actually—he chose me.”

Max’s admiring gaze makes me warm all over. Oh my!

“I started to tell you earlier,” he says. “You didn’t want those stones for yourself. You never really went looking for them. You cared more about Mr. Pak and who’d killed him than anything else.”

I shrug. “Mrs. Pak said he believed I’d return the stones once I figured out where he’d hid them. What else was I going to do? You know? I couldn’t keep them. I sure couldn’t sell them. They’re not mine.”

He smiles.

I’m so glad I’m sitting. This guy’s more lethal than Tiffany’s gun.

“That’s it, Andie. That’s what I mean. Tiffany saw the stones for what they could do for her. Roger saw the stones as another trophy. You see the stones as someone else’s property.”

I give his answer some thought. “Actually, Max, the stones, and everything else, are God’s. He only puts things here on Earth for us to use and give him the glory. We all come to an accounting before him sooner or later. When that day comes, I want to be on his good side, since he’s done so much for me.”

My cohost again says nothing, studies me some more. Then, in a quiet, serious voice, he says, “I think there’s more I’m going to learn from you than just about gems. You up for it, Teach?”

Oh boy. What do I say?

I came home for a more peaceful life. Who’d a thunk I’d find so much excitement doing TV in plain old Louisville? Who’d a thunk I’d be forced to share the screen with a California gem-dunce surfer boy?

And live to . . . what? Tell about it? Do another show? Get along with him?

What? What’s next, Lord?

I look at Max, take a deep breath, and say, “Let me get my gem-jar trays.”

Ginny Aiken, a former newspaper reporter, lives in Pennsylvania with her engineer husband and their three younger sons—the oldest is married and has flown the coop. Born in Havana, Cuba, and raised in Valencia and Caracas, Venezuela, Ginny discovered books at an early age. She wrote her first novel at age fifteen while she trained with the Ballets de Caracas, later to be known as the Venezuelan National Ballet. She burned that tome when she turned a “mature” sixteen. An eclectic list of jobs—including stints as reporter, paralegal, choreographer, language teacher, retail salesperson, wife, mother of four boys, and herder of their numerous and assorted friends, including the 135 members of first the Crossmen and then the Bluecoats Drum and Bugle Corps— brought her back to books in search of her sanity. She is now the author of twenty-six published works, but she hasn’t caught up with that elusive sanity yet.